This Labor Day, Working Families’ Earned Social Security Benefits Are at Risk

Yves here. It can’t be said often enough that the much-ballyhooed coming Social Security funding shortfall could easily be remedied and even allow for benefits improvements. But as early as the Clinton Administration, both parties have been scheming how to privatize the program, with a wee problem being how to escape responsibility for that. The subhead to this piece misleadingly depicts only the Republicans as being out to cut or gut Social Security, when none other than the sainted Obama tried to get a Grand Bargain done. That most assuredly does not mean that Team Trump is a friend of Social Security, but the Democrat track record says they aren’t ones either, save the marginalized progressive wing.

By Nancy J. Altman, president of Social Security Works and chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition. Originally published at Common Dreams

On Labor Day, we celebrate the contributions of workers. The best way to honor those contributions is to increase their compensation. A key part of their pay is deferred compensation in the form of Social Security. Working families earn their Social Security when they work and collect benefits when their work stops as the result of old age, disability, or death, leaving dependents.

It is well past time to expand those earned Social Security benefits. Congress has not increased them in over half a century.

Whether to expand or cut Social Security is a matter of values, not affordability. That value choice is on the ballot this November. The two major parties have very different values when it comes to Social Security.

Democrats recognize that expanding Social Security is a solution.

It is a solution to the nation’s retirement income crisis, where too many workers will never be able to retire without drastic reductions in their standards of living. As traditional pensions continue to disappear, replaced (if they are) by riskier, less reliable, inadequate 401(k)s, Social Security is more vital to American workers’ economic security than ever.

Social Security is strikingly superior to its private-sector counterparts. It is extremely efficient, secure, nearly universal, excellent for both long-term and mobile workers, and fair. Its one shortcoming is that its benefits are too low. By expanding those modest Social Security benefits, we are increasing the security of all of us.

In recognition of Social Security’s increasing importance for workers and their families, several bills have been introduced during this Congress to expand Social Security’s modest benefits, and the Biden-Harris administration has said it supports those efforts.

Representative John Larson’s (D-CT) Social Security 2100 Act, which has over 185 cosponsors, would increase benefits across-the-board for all current and future Social Security beneficiaries. It would improve the annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) to better match the true costs that seniors and people with disabilities face. The bill would improve benefits for widows and widowers, students, children living with grandparents, public servants, the most elderly Americans, lower-income seniors, those with disabilities, students, and more. And it pays for all of this by making the wealthy finally pay their fair share.

Similarly, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have introduced the Social Security Expansion Act. Their proposal would increase Social Security benefits across-the-board by $200 a month and update the way that COLAs are determined to better reflect the costs seniors and other beneficiaries face. Further, it would update and increase the minimum Social Security benefit and restore student benefits. Again, it would pay for all of these increases and restore Social Security to long-range actuarial balance by requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share.

Additional bills that would make positive changes to Social Security have been introduced as well. All of these bills not only address our nation’s looming retirement income crisis, but other challenges the nation faces, including rising income and wealth inequality. In fact, rising inequality has cost Social Security billions of dollars each year. Those are billions of dollars that should go to expanding Social Security.

In short, Democrats want to expand Social Security and ensure that all benefits can be paid in full and on time for the foreseeable future, by requiring billionaires and other uber-wealthy to start paying their fair share.

In stark contrast, Republican politicians see Social Security not as the solution it is, but as a threat. On top of that, Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress want to give even more tax breaks to the uber-wealthy. They certainly don’t want to force their plutocrats to pay their fair share to Social Security.

Republicans want to slash Social Security benefits—or worse–because they don’t believe in it. In fact, at its start, they called it socialism and voted against its creation. Today, it puts the lie to their view that government is the problem, not the solution.

Consistent with that antipathy, when Trump was president, he included, in every one of his four budgets, proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare. When he couldn’t get the cuts enacted, he employed the old tactic of “starve the beast.” Figuring tax cuts are easier to enact than benefit cuts, he cut income taxes which are used to fund Medicare and Medicaid, and sought to defund Social Security, which has its own dedicated revenue.

To advance his goal of undermining Social Security, Donald Trump grabbed the questionable power to go after its dedicated revenue unilaterally—something without precedent. Because Trump was limited to executive action, he was able to only defer the revenue, but he made clear that he would not just defer the revenue, but push to eliminate it, if he were re-elected. And, he has stated that Social Security cuts are on the agenda if he is elected to a second term.

That is the choice in November: Trump-Vance and their Republican colleagues want to cut Social Security and give handouts to the wealthiest. Harris-Walz and their Democratic colleagues want to expand Social Security’s modest, but vital benefits, while requiring those with incomes above $400,000 to pay their fair share.

Indeed, Harris and Walz have advocated this for a long time. Vice President Kamala Harris was an original cosponsor of the Social Security Expansion Act when she was in the Senate. And when her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, was in Congress, he was an original cosponsor of the Social Security 2100 Act.

Every generation has built on the strong foundation laid down 89 years ago, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt—and his Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins (the first woman ever to serve in a presidential cabinet)—shepherded Social Security into law. But it was not without a fight.

For those who believe in the value of Social Security and the freedom that economic security brings, let’s honor our working families this Labor Day by doing what we can to ensure that the party that created Social Security, and has always protected and expanded it, wins big this November.